Ranking every WWE Royal Rumble PPV in history

4. WWE Royal Rumble 2003

Match card & results

• Brock Lesnar def. Big Show to gain entry into Royal Rumble Match
• WWE World Tag Team Championship Match: The Dudley Boyz def. William Regal and Lance Storm (c)
• Torrie Wilson def. Dawn Marie Wilson
• World Heavyweight Championship Match: Scott Steiner def. Triple H (c) by disqualification
• WWE Championship: Kurt Angle (c) def. Chris Benoit
• Brock Lesnar wins 30-Man Royal Rumble Match

Before John Cena and Batista were looked at as the future, WWE had put a lot of effort in building Brock Lesnar for that role. He became the youngest WWE Champion in history in 2002 and kept after it by having him win the 2003 Royal Rumble.

The night started with Lesnar beating The Big Show for a spot in the Rumble and he showed off his power by giving Show an F5 to close things out. I don’t care how many times that spot goes down because it’s awesome every time and got the crowd going early. The Dudley Boyz beat William Regal and Lance Storm in the next bout to win the World Tag Team Championship in a quick but entertaining match that should have gotten some more time, especially seeing as how Torrie Wilson and Dawn Marie went on next.

The world title matches were up next and began with Scott Steiner taking a run at Triple H and the World Heavyweight Championship. Thank goodness for Triple H and Ric Flair, who made the best out of this situation. It’s not as horrible as many people make it out to be but it’s certainly not great by any stretch of the imagination. We can thank Trips and The Nature Boy for providing some entertainment but we can REALLY thank Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit for putting on a classic in the WWE Championship match. Again, this is a match that’s never going to be talked about as one of the great Rumble pay-per-view bouts due to Benoit’s presence but this cancelled any negativity from the previous two matches and is a big reason why this event is sitting in this spot. It was a nice mix of technical wrestling but also had plenty of action and the finish was perfect and really got the crowd back into things.

That took us into the Rumble match and there was plenty going on right from the start as Chris Jericho beat the tar out of Shawn Michaels. They were the first two entries and things got rolling from there. After eliminating HBK, Jericho would last almost 40 minutes before Shawn came back out to the ring to get his revenge, which caused Jericho to get eliminated by Test. This would lead to their great match at WrestleMania XIX. Jericho was a big part of this match and set the pace and tone early on as things never got dull. John Cena made a big splash in his Rumble debut and his rap before he got in was epic.

The end of the match was full of power. Kane, Batista, The Undertaker and Lesnar were the final four in the match and Lesnar got the win after last eliminating ‘Taker. Hmmm….I wonder if those two will ever cross paths again. Very fun show, even with the stuff in the middle.